


Blades

by Saki101



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dreams and Nightmares, Episode: Sherlock (TV) Unaired Pilot, M/M, Strangers to Lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-04
Updated: 2018-06-04
Packaged: 2019-05-18 04:31:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14845757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saki101/pseuds/Saki101
Summary: A sequel to the unaired pilot.





	Blades

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Round 8 of the [Come at Once Writing Challenge](https://come-at-once.dreamwidth.org/) to [Tei's](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tei/pseuds/tei) prompt of: hungry. I wandered away from the prompt a bit, but the story does begin with dinner. Does that count?

**GL:** _Oi, Sherlock! I’ve still got questions for you._  
**JW:** _Inspector Lestrade, to my certain knowledge, this man has not eaten for several days. Now, if you want him alive for your next case, what he’s going to do right now is have dinner._  
**GL:** _And who the hell are you?_  
**JW:** _I’m his doctor._  
**SH:** _And only a fool argues with his doctor._

**o~o~o0o~o~o**

The faint sound of plucked strings vibrated through the subdued light. John sank into the cushioned back of the bench, stretching his legs out under the table. The other remaining patrons were seated well away from their alcove at the rear of the dining room. Under cover of his serviette, he undid the button at his waist and sighed. “That was the best Chinese food I’ve had in my life.” He folded his hands over his belly and gazed across the dishes and bowls, emptied of their delicacies, at his new flatmate.

Sherlock held his hand up to his mouth. With the tip of his tongue, he licked a drop of sauce from his thumb.

John was doubly glad of his serviette.

Sherlock caught his eye. 

John didn’t look away. “Do I have to sell a kidney to help pay for this or did you get the owners here off a murder charge as well?”

“Neither, although we do have an arrangement.”

John raised an eyebrow.  


Sherlock held up a dish that had been hidden by the drinks menu. Upon it were fortune cookies.

John stirred sufficiently to reach out and pluck one off the plate.

“I compose fortunes for them.”

“Next week’s lottery numbers?” John asked, thinking it just might be possible.

Sherlock smiled. “They have a lot of regular customers. I deduce a few things about them and the owner picks the inoffensive bits and prints them off. Lǎng serves the two for tuppence cookies to newcomers.”

John sat up enough to crack his cookie open over the table. “How do they get the bespoke fortunes in?” 

“They bake those here,” Sherlock said, snapping his sweet in two and extracting the paper. 

John popped half his cookie into his mouth and angled the scrap of paper until he got a bit more light to fall on it. _Guard the treasure fortune has sent you._ His eyes darted towards the kitchen and then across the table. 

Sherlock was blinking at the paper in his hand, then his fingers closed around it. He looked over at John. “Shall we?” he said and shoved the hand clutching the paper into his pocket.

John nodded, pulling his jacket on as he stood. He zipped it up partway. They did have to walk out past the other customers.

**o~o~o0o~o~o**

The chill midnight air was a balm on John’s flushed cheeks. He left his jacket half-open and strode alongside Sherlock, destination undiscussed. John hummed one of the melodies from the restaurant.

Sherlock glanced down at him. “You have a good ear.”

“That's about the extent of my musical talent.”

“You play...” His eyes flickered over John, lingered on his hands, lingered longer on his mouth. "Woodwind or brass...woodwind, I think. Less ostentatious.

Eyebrows raised, John glanced up, shook his head and returned his eyes to the road. “Could barely call it playing. I learned the clarinet at school, but was always more interested in rugby practice than scales. They would have thrown me out of the band if they’d had another clarinettist.”

“You learnt the required pieces with little practice. You did it by ear.”

“Mostly. Now and then there’d be a song I really liked and I’d play it over and over, faster, slower, with a little improvisation, until Harry would threaten to kill me.”

“You liked the music tonight.”

John looked up again, for longer. Definitely liked more than the music. “Could you play it?”

“Not readily adaptable for the violin, but I have the recording.”

“Yeah?”

Sherlock nodded. “Lǎng gave it to me. It’s his elder daughter, Zhen, performing, when she was still a student. She teaches ‘round the corner at RAM now.”

“Free concert tickets?”

“Of course.”

“There’s more there than clever fortunes for cookies,” John said.

Sherlock grinned. “They have a bit of a cult following in the neighbourhood.”

“Even so, I deduce that there’s something else you did for them.”

“I adapted another one of Zhen's compositions for the violin,” Sherlock said, instead of answering. “Would you like to hear it?”

They turned onto Baker Street. Over the road, police tape no longer blocked off part of the footpath. John paused at the crosswalk and peered down towards the station. “The trains’ll stop running soon.”

“The last one’s gone already and the night bus would take forever.” He crossed the street.

John followed. 

“Tomorrow morning, we can collect your things,” Sherlock said as they reached the opposite pavement.

“I don’t have much to move,” John replied.

“I’m curious to see where you’ve been since you got back."

“There’s not much to see either.”

“I doubt that,” Sherlock said, unlocking the door.

John hesitated at the threshold, picturing Sherlock analysing the dismal weeks he’d passed in his bedsit as clearly as if the walls were covered with murals depicting them.

“Come in and close the door,” Sherlock stage whispered from the foot of the stairs. “Mrs Hudson will be complaining that we’re letting all the heat out.”

John glanced towards the dark glass of the door down the hall. “Looks like she’s asleep.”

“Even so. She has a sixth sense for these things.”

John shut the door quietly and tip-toed to where Sherlock was standing. “She probably wasn’t pleased with the bullet hole.”

Sherlock began a stealthy ascent. “We’ll appeal to her civic spirit if she mentions it when she brings up tea in the morning.”

“I thought she wasn’t your housekeeper.”

“So she says.” Sherlock pointed towards the next stair and stepped over it. “That one creaks. We’ll see in the morning.”

With a tad less agility, John followed suit. “Lots of things we’re likely to see in the morning,” he murmured.

**o~o~o0o~o~o**

He struggled with the bedclothes, flung them to the floor and sat up, panting. His eyes flitted about the room. The wardrobe loomed. The chair crouched. Grey light seeped in around the window shade. “No,” he shouted and covered his face with his hands. “No, no, no, no, no.”

There was noise on the stairs. The door slammed against the wall.

John leapt to his feet, elbows out, stance wide. He wanted his gun.

A shadow blocked the exit. “John!”

Even raised in alarm, the voice resonated, deep and dark. John clutched the bedpost and managed to sit. The shadow billowed across the room, engulfing him.

“I dreamt I was too late.”

Sherlock knelt on the carpet, folds of dressing gown fluttering down around him.

“When I got to the window across the road, you were swallowing the pill.” John’s voice caught. “You swallowed the damn pill.” John thumped the bed, fists clenched.

Sherlock rubbed his hands along John’s arms.

“I shot him. Glass shattered everywhere. I ran down the stairs, across the street, shards of glass glittering around me like a swarm of butterflies. I hammered and banged and shoved against the door. The glass cut my hands and face, gouged and scored the wood. Still, I couldn’t get in; the door was locked. I could have saved you if I could have got in. Finally, Mrs Hudson flew down the street and opened the door, but when I got upstairs it was too late. I had taken too long. You were gone and I couldn’t bring you back.”

Sherlock shuffled closer, wrapped his arms around John. “I won’t lock you out.” He leaned his head against John’s chest, listened to the hammering of John’s heart. “I have a habit of keeping people at arm’s length.”

John’s left arm lifted, curved around Sherlock’s back. “I let them close enough to get some friction.” He exhaled. Sherlock’s curls moved with the force of it. “For a while, they think they’re in, but then they realise that they’re still outside. Have always been outside.” He rested his cheek on top of Sherlock’s head and closed his eyes. “Somehow you got in.”

“I’m good at picking locks.”

John snorted. “Clearly.” He smoothed his hand down Sherlock’s spine, over the silk and back to the warm skin of his neck. “Now I’m afraid you’ll go off alone someplace to prove you're clever and I won’t be able to reach you.”

“You’d rather come along?”

“Always.”

Sherlock leaned back. John opened his eyes. “You’d best come down to my room, then. I’ve been known to sleepwalk.”

“Really?”

“I did as a child. Who knows when a relapse might occur.”

“You should have a doctor on hand.”

“Assuredly.”

Sherlock rose to his feet and held out his hand. 

“I’m not likely to get lost going down one flight of stairs,” John replied, clasping the forearm.

Sherlock tugged John to his feet. “Best not to risk losing one’s doctor,” he said and winked. 

For an instant, the wan light showed only the exhaustion on John's face and then he smiled back.

**o~o~o0o~o~o**

It was bright in the downstairs room, even with the curtains drawn. Mid-afternoon. Quietly, John propped himself up on one elbow and watched Sherlock’s back rise and fall in the rhythm of deep sleep, his face half obscured by his pillow.

John often woke during the night, or whenever they made it to bed, after a case. In darkness, he’d shift closer to Sherlock’s warmth, curl his arm around chest or hip or shin and let sleep claim him again. In the light, he’d rest a hand on the curls above the duvet’s edge when the air was chill or stroke along the double curve from shoulder to thigh when summer days led to covers being kicked away.

As now.

But John didn’t touch. He slipped from the bed; shut the door to the loo without even a click. Tepid water and shampoo washed the sweat and grime of the chase away. He stood, eyes closed, massaging his scalp long after the bubbles had swirled down the drain as though he could wash the images from his brain.

He towelled off, stared in the mirror, rubbing his fingers over his stubbled cheeks. It had been a hectic three days and there had been a close call. That was when the dreams came back. Not the old ones of gunfire and sand, but the newer ones of starless skies and falling. He lathered, cleared a track through the foam with his razor. The corner of his mouth twitched. Usually, Sherlock flew in John’s dreams, his coat billowing out around him like dark wings. He swooped and soared, seizing culprits with long, pale talons or plucking John out from in front of an oncoming bus or off of a crumbling roof edge. John lifted his chin, scraped along his jaw. But when death came too close, when John was almost too late, the dreams where Sherlock fell came and scarlet stained his unfurled wings as he lay broken at John’s feet. 

John rinsed away the traces of lather, cleaned his teeth, and walked into the bedroom with only the towel with which he was rubbing his hair.

Sherlock had moved a little. A knee was bent. An arm was outstretched across the empty space beside him, the bottom sheet clenched between his fingers. He hadn’t pulled up the covers though.

John knelt astride the outflung arm, smoothed his damp towel from Sherlock’s shoulders to his thighs. 

“Mmm. Come back to bed.”

“I am in bed.”

“Not in enough,” Sherlock grumbled, his fingers closing around John’s ankle.

“I see.” John shook his head over Sherlock’s back, drops of water spangled the smooth expanse. He rubbed the towel through them and down between Sherlock’s legs.

“Nightmare.”

“Yeah.”

“My jumping onto the departing lorry,” Sherlock said, hand moving up John’s calf.

“Good deduction.”

“You jumped on, too, and you were a couple steps behind me, and have shorter legs,” Sherlock slid his knee higher.

“Ta for that,” John said, bending forward and pressing his lips to the small of Sherlock’s back. He turned his head. “I’m strongly motivated.” He rubbed his cheek over the nearer buttock. 

“Clean-shaven.”

“As you like,” John murmured, tossing the towel away. He replaced it with a questing hand.

Sherlock shifted and turned, dragging his fingers along John’s thigh as he rolled. He stared up at John as he settled back into the mattress. “I know you’ll always be right behind me. I sense you there.”

John leaned down. “Shouldn’t have turned over then,” he said before his lips reached Sherlock’s.

Long fingers returned to smooth thighs. 

John swung a leg athwart Sherlock’s hips, pressed his smooth groin against Sherlock’s curly one. Hips rose to meet him. A sinewy arm wound across his back. The hips thrust higher, one shoulder, too. John looked up at the pale face that was now above him.

Sherlock was wide awake, eyes bright and hair wild. “Everywhere?” he breathed and John nodded. “Let me see.” John lifted his chin and Sherlock kissed beneath the exposed jaw and throat, and on down across his chest.

John giggled as Sherlock’s nose tickled beneath his arm. “Ah, I don’t think the deodorant is meant to be ingested.”

“How did you have time?” Sherlock asked between nips and licks along John’s side.

“You were sleeping very soundly and I’m very skilled with a blade.”

Sherlock nuzzled the crease at the top of John’s thigh. John pulled his legs up and apart.

“Oh,” Sherlock gasped. He nosed beneath the smooth testicles. “You used the straight razor.” He drew back, his eyes wide. “John, you could have done yourself an injury.”

John smiled down his chest at the furrowed brow and narrowed eyes visible above the swell of his cock. “I told you, I’m very good with a blade.”

Sherlock’s eyes grew darker. “You have to do me, too.”

John grinned, locked his legs behind Sherlock’s back and rolled them onto their sides. “First one way,” he said, pressing their cocks together and nipping at the plump bottom lip he loved so well. “And then the other.”

Sherlock let out a long exhalation and stretched his arms above his head. 

John released his scissorhold, lifted a long leg and kissed over the pulsing vein behind the knee.

Sherlock eased onto his back, closed his fingers around the top of the headboard and tilted his hips upwards. “Whatever you prescribe, Doctor.”

**~o0O0o~**

**Author's Note:**

> \- The dialogue quoted at the beginning is from the Unaired Pilot, starting at 53:20.
> 
> \- RAM stands for Royal Academy of Music which is on Marylebone Road, less than a ten-minute walk from Baker Street.


End file.
